Two vacant buildings at 1608 and 1606 Walnut St. are owned by the Freestore Foodbank. The Freestore has asked to demolish them for parking. / The Enquirer/Cara Owsley

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In Over-the-Rhine, old buildings are plentiful, but parking is scarce. So should some of the former be sacrificed to make more of the latter?

It’s a question that goes to the heart of an issue that will be considered by the city’s Historic Conservation Board and involves buildings owned by the Freestore Foodbank.

The vacant buildings, at 1606 and 1608 Walnut St., were built in 1880 and are examples of the Italianate architecture for which the Over-the-Rhine Historic District is nationally known.

They are also crumbling.

The Freestore bought them in 2007 to demolish and create a more efficient entrance to the loading dock of its Customer Connection Center on Liberty Street. Now, though, it wants to tear the buildings down to make a parking lot.

“The bottom line is, I’ve got probably 20 volunteers on a daily basis at our Liberty Street location, in addition to 35 employees, and I’ve got no place to park them,” Freestore President and CEO Kurt Reiber said Tuesday at a conservation board hearing. The hearing, attended by about a dozen residents, was a chance for interested people to review the demolition proposal and ask questions.

Leisa Wilcox, who lives just up the street from the properties, said she is “against smashing down some more buildings in my neighborhood, just to make parking.”

Caroline Hardy Kellam, a senior city planner who will prepare a report for the conservation board, said last week she would not recommend that the buildings be demolished. Although they have been neglected, she said, the buildings “are not structurally unsound. They are not in danger of falling.”

The two properties have been an ongoing saga for the Freestore since it bought them seven years ago. The Freestore paid $253,250, according to Hamilton County Auditor records. In 2008, the Historic Conservation Board denied the Freestore’s request to demolish the buildings. So the Free­store attempted to redevelop them into 12 units of affordable housing.

Preliminary estimates put the cost at $700,000, Reiber said. The Free­store obtained $900,000 in grants, and “we thought we could make this happen.” But the city required prevailing wages to be applied to the project, and so the estimated cost rose to $1.5 million. The Freestore abandoned that idea.

It then began working with a commercial real estate firm to try to sell the buildings. The firm, Reiber said, contacted several potential buyers but received no offers. So the Freestore again began seeking permission to demolish.

Once those plans became public, Over-the-Rhine activists began mobilizing. Among them: Ryan Messer, best known as leader of the Believe in Cincinnati group that worked to save the streetcar. Reiber said he talked with Messer late last week, and Messer told him he could put him in touch with several potential buyers.

It’s important to save such buildings, Messer said Tuesday afternoon. “Those buildings are Over-the-Rhine. That streetscape is so important. Do you like to see a full set of teeth, or do you like those teeth where every other one is gone?”

To allow more time to explore the sale of the buildings, the formal Historic Conservation Board hearing, which was set for Monday, has been tentatively rescheduled for Feb. 24.

When asked the minimum price he’d accept for the pair of buildings, Reiber said, “I’d like to get close to $100,000.”

Some meeting attendees questioned why the Freestore hasn’t done more to stabilize the buildings, which Reiber said have “partial roofs” that leak.

Reiber responded that the Freestore didn’t know the process would drag on this long.

“Could we have done some things to stabilize the buildings in the interim?” he said after the meeting. “Yeah, but ... for every dollar I spend on that, it’s three meals I can provide to hungry people.” ⬛

I cover eastern Hamilton County communities, Clermont County and the Cincinnati Zoo, and write about local history. Email me at jjohnston@enquirer.com